Benchmarking Malaysia in the Global Information Society: Regressing or Progressing?

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate how the Dalenius-Hodges stratification methodology typically used in sampling, when combined with ranking and index standardization procedures, becomes a powerful policy tool for classifying and benchmarking global information society (GIS) phenomena. The Dalenius-Hodges methodology is preferable to other popular benchmarking methodologies; it has an objective criterion in demarcating strata boundaries and a standardized procedure of compiling indexes irrespective of the nature of the variables and is conceptually simple and easy to compute. For studying GIS phenomena, the paper proposes a socio-technology model, focusing on nine basic variables apportioned under information communications technology (ICT) access, diffusion, usage, and skills. The model uses raw data extracted from 154 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) member countries for 2002 and 2007. For each variable, the countries are ranked and classified under the proposed 8-S Framework, with the most advanced group termed Skaters and the least developed group Sleepers; the other categories are Striders, Sprinters, Sliders, Strollers, Shufflers, and Starters, as determined by the index values, which theoretically range from a minimum score of zero to a maximum of 100. In an attempt to understand the performance of various nations in the GIS ladder, Malaysia’s performance received special attention. After enjoying spectacular growth for more than two decades during the preceding agro-industrial era, Malaysia has been losing its economic advantage to a number of newly liberated economies, in particular, in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). Malaysia was one of the early adopters of Internet technology among developing nations and pioneered the promulgation of a knowledge-based economy to overcome its loss of investment advantage to a number of low-wage countries in Asia. This has become a major policy concern for Malaysia’s economic performance especially in the wake of new investment factors and criteria related to the information age.